What to talk about with your skip level manager

hello and welcome to another episode of the corporate etiquette show where we break down the corporate world so you can make better sense of it my name is Laura and in this episode I want to talk about why you should have a month-to-one meeting with your skip level manager and how to make this meeting useful so if that sounds interesting to you then do give this video a thumbs up because it really does help out the channel and it helps get this video in front of more and more people and if you'd like to get more videos on corporate life career progression then do click subscribe and ring that Bell so you get notified every time I put out a new video so let's jump right into it first I do want to take a little bit of time to kind of demystify this meeting with your skip level manager and kind of address some of the myths that I have heard said to me or circulating around the office at various points in my career first and foremost it has to be said that it is totally okay and is actually recommended to have a meeting with your skip level manager they are not God himself never to be talk to it's totally fine to set up a recurring meeting where the two of you can have a chat and I don't honestly that if your line manager is for some reason against this meeting whatever that reason might be to be honest I think that is a red flag and I think you should start paying a little bit more attention to how your job is going and what your manager is saying and doing in relation to your job at the company currently the second thing that I want to highlight of course is that this meeting with your skip level manager cannot be as often as the one with your direct line manager right if you look at the organization which tends to be kind of pyramid shaped obviously if your manager has let's say four direct reports it's easy to have an hour a week with those four people however if you go one level up your skip level manager might actually have a total of 16 or 18 reports both direct and then one line below obviously having an hour or even a half an hour with all of these people every week is challenging to say the least so it will not be as frequent or perhaps as lengthy as the meeting that you have with your direct line manager however it does not mean that it is not as regular it'll still be a regular occurrence however it'll be shorter in length and simply not as frequent so if you are meeting your direct line manager let's say every week for an hour as I recommended in one of my other videos that I will link up here then you will probably meet your skip level manager let's say for a half an hour every other week not every week similarly if your skip is very high into the corporate career and their schedules are very very busy you might even meet them just once a month the third thing that I want to highlight before we get started is that if done write this meeting is actually mutually beneficial so both of you are getting something out of it that's why you should have it so don't feel guilty for taking up their time there is no such thing and I will guide you through how to make the most out of this meeting over the course of this this video and last but not least number four I do want to say that it is okay also for you to initiate this meeting so don't wait around thinking well you know at one point my skip level manager is going to want to talk to me and then I will be ready and prepared no similar to how I said at point one it is totally okay to talk to your skip level manager and you also don't have to wait for them to initiate this meeting you can simply drop them a line and say hey I'd like us to have a regular meeting is it okay if I put a half an hour in your calendar every other week or once a month tell me what frequency would work for us to sync before we get into how to make the most out of this skip level meeting I do want to take the time to think the two people that voted in my community poll if you haven't noticed YouTube has decided to give me a community tab now so I'll try to make more polls to get your opinions about what you would like to see in videos so keep an eye out for that and again thank you to the two people that actually voted I wish I could also give you a like but I can't but thank you for voting all right so first and foremost when you meet your sleep level manager forget the day-to-day unlike the meeting with your direct line manager this meeting is definitely not about giving them the rundown of what you did the past two weeks and what you're going to do the next two weeks I am pretty sure if they are any sort of good at their job they have other mechanisms of figuring out how things are going so they really don't need to have these meetings in order to really get those types of details instead you should focus this time talking about bigger picture stuff or even just big picture stuff for example you should ask about the company priorities and how did we get to those priorities why is that what we choose to focus on as a company similarly you can ask more challenging questions such as why perhaps some actions of the company seem to go at odds with these stated priorities what is going on there and what is the reasoning behind this and if you want to narrow it down just a little bit more you should also ask them how does your work fit into these larger priorities how are you contributing towards them ask them about bigger picture things that are coming up May maybe some things that are not very visible from where you're standing but it's very clear to them from where they are looking at things the next thing that you should be doing in these meetings is actually try to put your finger on the pulse just a little bit and ask them about what do they think is going well in the department and within your team and also what do they think is going not quite well within your department within your team or perhaps even with you specifically if should they have this type of feedback if you ask these kinds of questions I'm prompted you will most likely get a very honest answer and a very unscripted answer so it is really off the top of their head what is going well and what is not going well within your department this is a very interesting thing to note I think it's not very often that we really get that unscripted opinion and really find out what does our leadership think of us how is my team's work really viewed on top and once you have this information this actually puts you in the unique position to make some decisions and perhaps dispel some myths that they might I'd have clarify some wrong assumptions or maybe figure out that you know what the frequency or the type of communication that you have been sending out about your work is actually not working because it's really just not reaching your leadership so you can take this feedback and consider what can you do to improve the visibility to prevent these misunderstandings or wrong assumptions from forming in the heads of your skip level managers and above and I can definitely tell you that you want to do this because well one if your skip level doesn't seem to have any sort of idea about what you are doing or what you are contributing to similarly what your team impact is that's not a really good place to be in in your career people have to know and appreciate what you are doing before they can actually support let's say a promotion and this is unfortunately true even if the work that you are doing is important and of a high quality standard but you're simply not marketing yourself or your team properly then it's I'm not going to say that that all of that hard work is useless because that's not true but it might be overlooked and it might not get the rewards that it actually merits simply because people are not aware of it so the key takeaway from here is that you need to figure out from your skip level if you are marketing yourself well enough and if you are marketing your team well enough and if you're not then what actions can you take in order to remedy this next just as you have asked them for feedback you can also give them some feedback and I do want to stress that I know I know that this is a very daunting task to actually give somebody feedback face to face Maybe somewhat more unscripted and in a more informal way than let's say in the annual reviews where you actually have to write something down but I cannot stress this enough you giving them feedback is actually one of the key components that make this meeting mutually beneficial they need to get feedback from you about the things that are not going well and one of the best examples that I can find here is actually that of when the company morale or the team morale is actually very low and I can assure you that if you have a reasonably good skip level they will be very very interested in knowing that the team morale is low and figuring out what is the root cause and how they can address it of course you do always run the chance that you might have also a toxic skip level manager which you know is very unfortunate but that is beyond what we can control so I suggest that we don't really focus on that still I do want to make the point that your skip level manager cannot fix what they are not aware of so give them an opportunity to fix these wrong perceptions to fix some wrong processes or or to come in and help your team with their vote with their endorsement with their support to make sure that leadership decisions are properly communicated and understood and people are on board with them give them an opportunity to fix what is wrong and I know that sometimes we assume well you know thermostat level manager of course they know what's going on isn't that why they're their manager right I I know that this is a very tempting mindset to have however let's also just admit that well unless you're working for a robot your skip level manager is probably also human and they have their own limitations so let's give people the opportunity to fix what is wrong before we jump to conclusions that they simply don't care and on the flip side of course you should give them feedback about things that don't work or that are bothering the team or that are causing low morale but you can also give them feedback about what is working well what do you like about your department what do you think is making you happy to come to work every day for example if you like the learning opportunities that are offered at the company make sure to mention this so that they understand that this is an important factor in your decision to continue working at this company perhaps you like how team events are organized or maybe you like the fact that you can go to conferences and get to enhance your knowledge by talking to other professionals from your domain make a point to mention the things that keep you motivating the things that they are doing well or the things that the company is doing well so that in the back of your manager's head there can always be a checklist of things that should definitely be continued so if there is a budget discussion and somebody suggests that they cut the learning opportunities they can actually have some arguments to say no we should try to keep those learning opportunities because you know what this is what my people tell me makes them happy the next thing that I think you should consider doing in your skip level meeting is actually do ask for their help and I'm going to split this section actually into two because you can ask them help for yourself but you can also ask help for your team so let's break this down when you are asking help for yourself I'm specifically talking about asking help with your career progression talk about your aspirations and ask how they actually fit into the larger scale of the department or the future of the team or the future of the department how do they see this role playing out in the organization in the years to come and you should also especially be doing this if you are in a position where you are considering either changing your job within the same company or perhaps even leaving the company if you are still trying to decide what is best for you this information from your skip level manager can actually give you some sense of what the future holds should you choose to stay are there any exciting new projects coming up that you would be part of automatically or perhaps you can transition to or actually do you see a point in the future where your team might actually be disbanded and of course you can also see what the plans for the other teams in your department are and try to figure out again how does your team fit into those future plans or perhaps how do they not fit in at all and another thing that might help especially assuming that your skip level manager is of the same craft as you is actually to ask them what their career progression look like of course I do feel like I should have a disclaimer here namely that I don't index a lot on these discussions however it can be interesting to understand what are the decisions that they made and how they got in the position that they are in now and probably the things you are most looking to get is number one what are the best decisions that they ever made for their career and number two what are some of the decisions that they really really regret regarding their career and if they could go back in time they would either do something else or not do that thing at all again it doesn't necessarily mean that you will ever face the same decisions as they did just because you are in the same domain as them however it is interesting to have this in the back of your head to potentially avoid making bad decisions in the future should you encounter something at least remotely similar secondly when you are asking for help from your skip level manager you should also ask for help about large-scale problems that impact you for example if you see that your department or your team always has a really tough time a really tough working relationship with another department there is always friction or there is a really broken process these are the kinds of things that you should be bringing to your skip levels attention for example you can mention that you know there seems to be be a larger scale misalignment going on and this is really impacting your team and then try to understand from your skip level manager how are these alignments done can you be invited when these things are decided when will this alignment take place who will be on the invite list and again is your skip level even aware that you are having these types of issues in your team try to ask for help and also understand what could they do or what could they task you to do in order to try to smooth things out and really improve the day-to-day work that you are doing last but most definitely not least I do want to say that there is another thing that you can do in your skip level meeting that will really just make this super super super useful meeting to have and namely you should be taking the opportunity when you are discussing with your skip level manager you should be actively listening for what areas of opportunities are being highlighted to you and can you jump on any of them in order to get assigned to a more interesting project do be assigned to solve a large-scale problem and so on of course this contrast to what I was telling you before to figure out what the future opportunities are and you still should do that but there might also be immediate opportunities that you can take advantage of in order to progress your career given the nature of large corporations and the corporate world It generally has a bit of lag when we talk about the future right the future is you know ideally six months away but it could also be like one two three four years away so if you're really just waiting for the future opportunity that's a really long time to not do anything for your career so we really want to look at what are some more immediate opportunities that we can jump on so for example anything that your skip level is complaining that is a problem try to assess is this something that I can involve myself in and try to fix and drive to completion and that'll be a really really good opportunity for you to get noticed in the video on quiet quitting which I will link also up here I think I really mentioned and I hope that I drove it home the point that there is no actual promotion without a quiet promotion happening first and when I say a quiet promotion by that I mean you know you do things beyond your scope and then you know the actual promotion in title and money actually follow and in terms of identifying opportunities to actually make that promotion case for yourself well is there really any better opportunity than something that your leadership is complaining is not working well you already know that this problem not only has scope but it also has immediate visibility because it's off the top of their head they're telling you that this is not working and it is bothering them getting involved and contributing or even fixing by yourself this type of a problem will really take your promotion case from it might happen to we need to make this happen because we need to keep this person happy and ultimately that is the kind of opportunity that you really looking for constantly in your career that is it for today thank you very much if you have stuck around so far if you haven't already do give this video a thumbs up so we can feed the algorithm Gods then do click subscribe and ring that Bell so you get notified every time I put out a new video that's it for today have a good one [Music]

Channel: The Corporate Etiquette

Views: 21,209

Keywords: my managers manager, skip level, weekly meeting, best practices

Id: QCV4i5yhBGk

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022